


A Monster Returns

by radondoran



Category: Monsters Inc (2001), Monsters University (2013)
Genre: Canon Related, Gen, POV Outsider, Post-Canon, Undue Seriousness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-27
Updated: 2013-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-24 19:17:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,908
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/943671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radondoran/pseuds/radondoran
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The scariest experience of Brian Hobson's life was the day his daughter went missing.  The second-scariest was a strange incident at a summer camp eleven years before she was born.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Monster Returns

Nothing truly bad had ever happened to Mary Hobson before. There had been things that seemed bad, sure: teenage angst and collegiate existential crises and wedding jitters. And especially since she and Brian had decided to start a family, there had been plenty of time spent worrying and second-guessing. But that really hadn't been so bad, because Brian was there to buoy her up. The more stressed out Mary became, the more laid-back Brian was. It was infuriating at times, but it was also one of the qualities she valued most in him. "Parenting isn't an exact science," he'd say. "We're doing just fine." And when Mary was finished calculating which brand of jarred pureed yams had the best nutrient content and taste for the dollar value, because however carefree you claimed to be the details _were_ important, she had to agree. They were happy together; they didn't mind their jobs; they had a cozy home in a quiet neighborhood that was perfect for raising children in.

It was the day they woke up and found Molly's bed empty that Mary realized nothing bad had ever happened before this.

The police found no signs of forced entry, no sign of anyone leaving, no strange fingerprints, no witnesses, nothing. They questioned the parents for hours, together and separately. Mary cried even harder when she realized that they seemed to be focusing more on interrogating Brian. How could they think he would ever do anything to hurt their little girl? Didn't they know how much he loved her? Didn't they know how many times he had defused the trivial and world-altering crises of infanthood? Didn't they know how Mary needed him now more than ever?

After interminable nightmarish hours under the timeless fluorescents, they were sent home to wait for news. It was nearly dawn again. And Molly was there, asleep in her bed as if it were still yesterday morning and none of it had ever happened. Her parents rushed at her, seized her, fearing the worst. But she blinked sleepily at them and greeted them as mamma and dadda, and she was fine. The hospital and the pediatrician and their own eyes all confirmed that she was fine.

There was still no sign of entry or exit. The cops posted around the house had seen nothing. The official report ended up being that Mary Patricia Hobson had never left the premises. She had been hiding somewhere the entire time and this whole thing had been nothing more than a false alarm. Mary, senior, had the impression the detectives didn't believe it any more than she did, but one way or another the case was closed. Life began to flow in its accustomed course again astoundingly quickly. The fear faded, and soon afterwards the relief. They didn't talk about it; they tried and often managed not to think about it. Mary's worries returned their focus to the banal, and Brian regained his lighthearted propensity for calming them.

When she worried about Molly not making two-word sentences, Brian said, "Dr. McDaniel says she's fine. Some kids just start talking later than the average—that's why it's called the average." When she worried about Molly's eyesight because of her consistent use of the sky blue crayon to portray their orange tabby cat, Brian said, "She's _creative_!"

On that particular question, at least, he was probably right. After all, Mary reflected, sitting on the floor beside her daughter with a piece of red crayon in her own hand, kids’ drawings didn’t have to mean anything. Probably Molly just liked the bright colors. She was a regular pint-sized Picasso. Today she had put down the blue crayon and was working on a study in yellow-green. Or was that green-yellow? There were more colors in a box of crayons now than there’d used to be.

“Uh!” said Molly, with the tone that indicated _look_.

She held up the picture. Mary supposed it was some kind of oddly-proportioned stick person: a circle with four line segments coming off of it. It even had little cat ears and a smiling face—although Molly had drawn the eyes as concentric circles rather than side-by-side. "That's pretty," said Mary. "Who is that?"

Molly replied with an enthusiastic succession of four nonsense syllables.

"Oh, really!" Mary replied. Just because Molly didn't really talk, didn't mean they didn't have conversations. "He's a cute little guy, huh?"

"No!" said Molly, and laughed.

Mary laughed too. "Oh, I'm _sorry_!"

"What are you two going on about?" Brian asked from the kitchen, where he was lingering over his Saturday morning coffee. "Let me see."

He strolled over and ruffled Mary's hair affectionately as he bent over her monochrome doodles of teacups and assorted breakfast items. "Ah, yes, that's very pretty. I think we have a budding artist in the family."

"You're not supposed to look at _my_ picture, silly!"

"Oh, that's right!" said Brian in exaggerated surprise. "I bet Molly's picture is much nicer anyway. Let's see—" The smile dropped from his face. He stared at the drawing for a long second, and then breathed, "Oh my god."

"Brian!" Mary's glare was sincere this time. "I think it's a very nice picture! It's _creative_."

"I know this thing," said Brian quietly. "It's the Camp Teamwork Alien."

"What?"

"It's… oh my god." He collected himself and turned to Molly with a fair approximation of good humor. "Sweetheart, I'm gonna borrow Mommy for a little while so we can talk. You just stay here and keep working on your coloring, okay?"

"Okay!" Molly agreed, or repeated anyhow.

"What's the matter with you?" Mary asked in an undertone when they stood in the kitchen behind the wall that partitioned it from the living room.

"That green cyclops," said Brian. "I've seen it before. I mean—I only saw drawings of it, but that's what it was. It's the alien."

"Honey, what are you talking about? What alien?"

"When I was fifteen," said Brian, "I was an assistant counselor at a kids' summer camp. The first week, _something_ got into one of the girls' cabins. We never found out what it was, but all the girls described it the same way. Like a green beach ball, they said, with arms and legs and one big eye, and little antennae or horns or something. That thing Molly drew—that's it."

"That's just a coincidence," said Mary. "Anybody could make up a creature like that. They probably just believed they all saw it because of mob psychology or something. Honestly, it's not like you to get so upset just because a bunch of little kids got scared once at summer camp."

"They weren't scared!" said Brian intently. "That was the creepy part. _They weren't scared._ They just described the thing. They thought it was funny. They talked about it so calmly that Miss Tori thought it was a game until she saw the broken window.

"They had us round up the rest of the kids and hole up in the dining hall, and they called the park service to see what kind of animal the girls had seen. These park rangers, they were the real deal. They had the hats and everything. Highly trained men and women, you understand? I saw them through a window as they arrived, and they weren't afraid. They looked tough. I think they had—I don't know—tranquilizer guns at the very least. Anyway, they chased the thing back into the cabin. And then… Nobody ever told me what happened in there. But we could hear their screams all the way across the camp. Grown-ups," he said, unconsciously reverting to the diction of his younger self, "aren't supposed to scream like that.

"They said it was a bear. I knew a thing or two about animals. I saw the damage to that cabin, and it was no bear. The rangers were looking for a bear. They knew how to handle a bear. They didn't know how to handle whatever it was they found."

Mary stared back, caught in her husband's uncharacteristically hollow gaze. "I didn't know that story," she said at last.

"I don't tell it much. And I didn't want to scare you. I mean, I thought, god, what if Molly wants to go to camp sometime? I didn't want to go around saying she might get attacked by aliens! I didn't think I'd ever see or hear of that thing again. I never would have thought Molly already…" He trailed off.

"What are you saying?" Mary asked, reluctant to admit that she followed his train of thought.

"It's the alien," said Brian again. "What if it—what if _that's_ where she went?"

"She wasn't gone," Mary whispered automatically.

"She was gone! She was gone without a trace! She came back the same way. And now she's drawing pictures of little green men?"

"Oh my god. No, it can't be."

But Brian couldn't seem to stop himself from continuing his dull-voiced line of reasoning. "It makes sense. She's different since she came back, you know she is. She never slept through the night before. And all the day care teachers keep saying what a bold kid she is. Was she ever bold before? Even her artwork's changed. You were right about that. Remember that purple bug-thing she used to draw?"

"I always thought it was a gecko-thing," said Mary absently. "But now that you mention it, I haven't seen her draw that thing in… Oh, no. I haven't seen that thing… since."

"And that—that blue entity she's so fixated on now—what if it's not supposed to be Tiger at all? It has the same antennae as the thing from Camp Teamwork. Oh, god," he said again, slowly shaking his head. "They took her, didn't they? They took her and who knows what they did to her. What if that's why she's not talking? What if—how do we even know that's really our baby?"

Tears and fire sprang into Mary's eyes at once. She said, "Don't."

And the next instant Brian's voice was strangled and contrite. "No. How could I say that? Fuck." He convulsively took Mary's hands. "What are we going to do?"

Mary dropped his hands, and instead wrapped her arms around his torso and held on tight, whether to give or seek comfort she didn't know. "She is our baby," she said into his shoulder. "She's our baby and I don't care if she is a spy for little green men from Alpha Centauri, or—or anything. She's home with us now, and she seems happy. I'll tell you what we're going to do. We're going to love her and we're going to raise her the best that we can. And she's _going_ to talk, and she's going to be brilliant and beautiful and so special, and we're all going to keep trying to put this thing behind us forever. Okay?"

Brian squeezed back hard. "Okay," he repeated. He released her and tried to smile. "We can do that. We'll do just fine."

"That's right."

Still arm-in-arm, they moved back into the doorway to the living room. Molly looked up as they entered. "Rawr," she said, happily. "Rawr, rawr." She held up another sheet of paper. This one was a busy composition in blue and green and pink, a collection of unfamiliar and disproportionate shapes that seemed, once again, to be wholly unconnected to anything of this world.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] A Monster Returns](https://archiveofourown.org/works/8775220) by [RsCreighton](https://archiveofourown.org/users/RsCreighton/pseuds/RsCreighton)




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